noises off

Today would have been my mother's 92nd birthday. These are some of the flowers that we put in the church in thanksgiving to God for her life.
At my desk in the afternoon of what has been a brightly sunny day, with a little more moderate temperatures.
A string orchestra of young people is at this very moment playing a concert in the nave...with considerable verve, if not perfect intonation. We have become a favoured venue for recitals and small concerts, especially since the new grand piano arrived a couple of years ago...a thank-offering from one of our couples to the glory of God and in gratitude for 50 years of a happy marriage.
(Ah, they seem to have got the pizzicato part all together, excellent!)
Heaps of work to do both here and at home before bedtime.
The banquet last night was fun, plenty of nice food...and there was a little three-piece band (with recorded rhythm tracks) for dancing afterward. It's a long time since I was asked to dance...I was flattered, but declined as gracefully as possible (having had hot packs on knee and ankle all afternoon).
The management of the housing agency begs ~~or cadges~~gifts from local merchants, enough for each of the attendees: gift certificates from the supermarket, vouchers from restaurants and cafes, little luxuries from the drugstore. Much hilarity when these are given out.
Tomorrow being the 2nd of Advent -- there will be a special visitor at the end of the later service; one of the tenors in our choir will impersonate the bishop of Myra...to general mirth...
And the orchestra has finished up triumphantly with a truncated version of the William Tell Overture, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WHICH a woman phoned to ask whether she could be baptized without actually, like, y'know, joining the church, "because like I'm not sure I would want to join a CHURCH, I just hafta be baptized..."

I can see CLEARLY now...

Decided to take today as a really-and-truly day off ... so I launched myself into the morning traffic about 7 a.m., aiming for the physiotherapist at the far corner of the city. Having a choice of routes to the most convenient east-west artery, I opted for the one WITHOUT the level crossing...we have monstrously long freight trains in this part of the country, and I was already a bit behind schedule...I was only about a dozen blocks north of home, when I saw red and blue (police) lights strobing away in the dark ahead of me. (Prairie Metropolis is basically organized on a nice numbered GRID -- avenues run east and west, streets run north and south.) With my fellow motorists I executed a number of lane changes before we all realized this wasn't just a "squeeze left" or "squeeze right" situation -- the street was CLOSED. So we all detoured impromptu through the residential neighbourhood to the east, and eventually back to a major road. Before I got to my appointment the AM Golden-Oldies station had announced: not a traffic accident, but a homicide in the small hours of the morning, passenger in one car shot from another car, after an altercation outside a nightclub at Too-Big Mall. Grim and sad and frightening. And becoming all too frequent hereabouts.

After physio, seniors' early-bird breakfast at the department-store diner...and then back across town to pick up new eyeglasses. A big improvement, although the floor, and the computer keyboard, and my lunch (and my hands and feet!) all look rather bigger than I'm used to.

The optometrist is in the art-gallery end of town, so I used up the last half hour on my parking meter wandering in and out of galleries, looking at paintings...just LOVELY...and refreshing to the spirit.

Popped into the church office to check messages, emails, Facebook, blogs...and "the breadman" came by while I was here: a parishioner in his early seventies who married his childhood sweetheart about a year ago, en secondes noces, and has been incandescent with happiness ever since. He expresses this by giving people things...especially wonderful artisanal bread from the bakeries he and his new wife frequent. Bless their hearts. I have two huge beautiful round loaves to take home with me...to fuel a little sermon-work this afternoon (interspersed with ironing). I have a "Christmas" banquet to go to later on this evening -- residents of three seniors' apartment buildings, staff and Board members. That should be pleasant and undemanding!

Phooey

Celebrated St. Nicholas this morning with my minimum Thursday morning congregation. One of whom said, as she often does, "I do wish a lot more people would come to this service" but then she went on "But isn't it NICE when it's just us?"
And this was a morning when "nice" was at a premium, I admit. I'd just opened an email from a parishioner who went AWOL some time ago, without explanation; in response to my enquiry as to where and how she is, I got a tirade. In the interests of not whining, I'll omit the details -- other than that I'm accused of "grimacing" when, at a recent Bible study, she launched into a disquisition on auras, and people who are gifted and can see them etc. etc. Apparently my facial expression convicted me of being "ignorant and closed-minded."
I hurt. And I was glad of some "nice."
And I'm glad of blogging friends too. (If any of you are into auras, I apologize! and I assure you I'm holding my face very straight! Nary a twitch!)
We are promised a break in the weather by Sunday, it will be welcome.

Spec-tac-u-lar

A phone message last night that my new glasses are ready to be picked up. I think I'll go get them on Friday, the Official Day Off.
It is still cold, and it goes on snowing (TIDDLY POM), just a little, just enough to make the roads surprising all over again every morning.
Vagaries of the postal system -- I've had three successive issues of the Times Literary Supplement all in the last couple of days. The TLS is favourite in-bed reading -- nice and light, so if I fall asleep and drop it, it won't hurt me (unlike, say, the Larousse Gastronomique--ouf!)
In the most recent of the newly-arrived issues is a very good review by John Polkinghorne of books by John Cornwell and John Humphrys -- I like Polkinghorne's mind (hey! I agree with him, but that's not the whole story) and frankly at this point it is a comfort to find anybody on either side of the New Atheism debate with any detectable mind at all. Somebody pointed out -- maybe it was Terry Eagleton? -- that while the statements about religious faith and about Christianity made by people like Dawkins and Hitchens cause serious, careful, responsible Christian thinkers to clutch their heads in despair...so does the thinking, not to mention the behaviour, of a great many Christians...
I remember one of my students at Local University who said he couldn't understand why I was going to be ordained, when "everybody knew" that "anybody who has anything to do with religion, and, like, churches, is, sort of...well...DUMB." And he seemed quite intrigued by the notion that there was anything to LEARN or to THINK ABOUT in religious belief, at all--although flatteringly willing to take my word for it, when I assured him that if he ever really wanted to give his brains a work-out, I could introduce him to a couple of fellows named Rahner and von Balthasar, just to name two.
Now I have to write a letter to a dear elderly parishioner who is HONING to donate a stained glass window in memory of her late husband, and has set aside what she feels is quite a munificent sum, so to do -- and it is; but it would buy a stained glass window about the size of a cat-flap, and it's my job to point this out to her, gently and lovingly. Who's the patron saint of tact, does anybody know???

so what else is new?

Much encouraged by other bloggers, yesterday I declared a "SNOW MORNING" and didn't come to work until noon...I had time to read the Sunday papers (including the coloured funnies), sort some laundry, tidy up a bit in the kitchen, and drive #1 Son to campus on my way into the church.
Sunday evening was intense -- great turn-out for the Lessons & Carols, crackling good reading and roof-raising singing -- and then an absolute MOB for the potluck. We had set tables for 110, and had to find two more tables before everyone could be seated...AND there was food left over.
To my great joy, the folks from St. Fearfully High attended in large numbers and STAYED in large numbers, and indeed looked comfortable and happy and well-fed. It was most gratifying. These folks have tended to be more than a little isolated from the rest of the diocese for a number of reasons...it's good to feel that we've broken that down just a little. Of course we didn't pose them any specific liturgical problems such as female celebrants, either. But it is good to know that we can do together, what we can do together!
And our friends from the Mothers-Against-Drunk-Driving had left us a couple of dozen white roses so we had flowers to give away to the kitchen volunteers at the end of the evening as well!

so this morning I tried the Spice Quiz, results below. I suppose "salt" is what I'm SUPPOSED to be, after all. Darn. I was hoping for "FENUGREEK" or something a little jazzier... Maybe all that 50%-50% is a reflection of the ever-lovin' via media too...maybe?

Your Score: Salt

You scored 50% intoxication, 50% hotness, 50% complexity, and 50% craziness!

You are Salt!

You may be bland, but life just wouldn't be the same without you. You're plentiful and you come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colours. You bring out the flavour in whatever you touch and have been the world's best preservative for millennia. You rock.

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

colder than fludgeons

...no, I don't know what a fludgeon is, or indeed whether they come singly! But I am given to believe that fludgeons represent a certain standard of coldness.
My mother used to say -- but only of a living thing, such as a child -- "Oh, you're as cold as a FROG." So I felt I was in familiar territory when I came to read Robert Herrick's grace,

"Here a little child I stand,
heaving up my either hand;
cold as paddocks [=frogs] though they be,
here I heave them up to thee;
that a benison may fall,
on our meat and on us all."

My sassy aunt used to say, "Colder than a witch's...ankles" -- and I was all grown up before it occurred to me that she had emended that phrase to make it suitable for family use.

It was TWENTY BELOW Fahrenheit outside my house this morning. And inside my car. And also inside my shoes, which had been in my shoe bag IN my car overnight. Very refreshing to put on when I got to church, wow.

At this point we are three services down and one more to go. Two Eucharists this morning. The Mothers-Against-Drunk-Driving Candlelight service this afternoon. My plan to make them think it was time to move to another church, next year, failed. "Oh, you always give us such nice words," they said. I was hoping for something more on the lines of "Skleros ho logos," but no. So I SUPPOSE we'll book them for the first Sunday in December again next year, sigh. Besides -- on what other occasion am I escorted to my prayer desk by an honor guard of police officers, including Mounties in full red serge and all? (Also "packing heat" but I try not to think about that.)

Speaking of heat, I do WISH these groups would not prop the back doors open (at twenty below) while they carry in their paraphernalia. And while they stand in the parking lot discussing who will carry in which paraphernalia. It makes me testy.

And now the final practice is underway for the Advent Lessons and Carols...the choirs of Most Holy and Undivided, and St. Fearfully High...
The lectern Bible is all marked with the seven lessons. We have readers, for all seven lessons. We have come to a consensus on how many verses there are to "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."
There is no sermon, homily, address, or reflection, THANKS BE TO GOD.
And then we go downstairs and EAT, huzza. My orrechiette'n'shrimp'n'vodka-sauce casserole is warming up. I opted not to make the shrimp salad. Too chilly...and fludgeon-like.

Advent it is...

I spent morning and early afternoon at a Quiet Day at a small parish in the outer 'burbs; about a dozen people, which meant everybody could find a hidey-hole of his/her own for the quiet times. Nice visiting over lunch; nice lunch too of the soup'n'sandwich sort. Morning prayer to start off, Eucharist to end the morning. In the quiet times I pounded a bit on tomorrow's two sermons... and excused myself mid-afternoon to come back to Most Holy and Undivided to get some things typed up in readiness for the morning.
Advent One is always somewhat fraught, because in addition to the two morning services, and the Advent (NOT Christmas!) Lessons and Carols in the late afternoon, we have become the preferred venue for the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (known around here with moderate affection as the MADD Mothers). Their service is a kind of wake for the victims of drunk drivers...attended by police, EMTs, firefighters, correctional-service personnel (that's "jail guards," in case you wondered) and sometimes civic politicians. There is a lot of weeping and candle-lighting and usually some music, of a sort, and the clergy (that'd be moi) are asked to "say something spiritual." This may be the year I reflect on the place of PULLING ONESELF TOGETHER, FOR PITY'S SAKE, in the grieving process.
Time to go home and make my all-purpose, fills all gaps in the menu, special potluck supper salad: Curried Shrimp and Rice (with peas and raisins) Salad. "It's protein! it's carbs! it's vegetables! it's cold, so it must be salad!" If I were to put chocolate chips in it, it'd be dessert also. We have a major potluck supper following the Lessons & Carols...and I have night-before nerves that we might run short on some component thereof.
I found a message on the answering machine from a pleasant-voiced lady named Doris (not a parishioner), who was under the vague impression there was some sort of a concert here tomorrow. Called her back, explained about Lessons & Carols, pointed out there was a potluck, told her to bring scalloped potatoes. She sounded a bit nonplussed, but I figure sometimes you save time just by being flat-out DIRECTIVE in these situations.
Last night we were all at the cathedral for our bishop's final eucharist and leave-taking. Four months from now, God willing, we should have a new one. Or at least, know who the new one will be. It's a might interesting process, and not entirely free of politicking (yes, in the church).